If It's Too Loud...

Image via Facebook The upcoming monster project from blog favorite Hallelujah the Hills finally has a release date and a brand new single, and we're now freaking out in anticipation. The Boston band has one of the most ambitious projects we've ever heard of in music: DECK is an upcoming four album release with each song coinciding with a playing card is due out in June, and today we can listen to "Fake Flowers at Sunset." If you've been a fan of Hallelujah the Hills, you're going to know and love this song. According to its press release, this new song "... is a folk song with a disco beat," which kind of sums up the Hills' sound. It lives in both worlds of folk and indie rock equally, and is both epic and a fairly simple sounding song at the same time. Plus, it features Cassie Berman of Silver Jews on backing vocals, just to make it that much cooler. It's the sound that has caused them to have amassed a diehard following over almost twenty y...

I almost didn't post about this show. I went mostly because it was a Hallelujah the Hills show at the eighty person capacity Lilypad, and that just can't be missed. But, I'm completely unfamiliar with Cassie Berman, and I'm embarrassingly unfamiliar with Silver Jews or the music of David Berman despite it being right in my musical sweet spot, including time period. The evening started off with Cassie Berman and Silver Jews touring guitarist Peyton Pinkerton playing music, and then slowly joined by members of Hallelujah the Hills as her backing band, coming and going as was necessary. Eventually Berman and Pinkerton left and it became a Hallelujah the Hills show, with both Berman and Pinkerton rejoining at various times. As I decided I wouldn't be posting about this show during Cassie Berman's set so I didn't embarrass myself, a funny thing happened. Slowly the enthusiasm the majority of the crowd became contagious. I may have not been a Silver Jews disciple ...

Photo by Danielle Dabney Stef Chura's Midnight  is a strong contender for best album of 2019 and she's just released a cover of Silver Jews's classic "How to Rent a Room." Chura has been performing the song at live shows for a while, but after the untimely passing of David Berman earlier this year she chose to release a formal version of the song.  "'How To Rent a Room' has always been one of those songs that I could never let go of," explains Chura. "Ever since the first time I heard it it’s always been one of my favorite songs and remains one that imprinted me as a young songwriter. Now, in light of his death, the lyrics take on a new and much sadder meaning. At the time they seemed conceptual, but the line 'Now there’s a lot of things that I’m gonna miss, like the thunder down country and the way water drips' is now a haunting and deeply poetic rendering of everyday minutiae and the texture of our lives that we don’t appreciat...